Publisher's Weekly Review
Allen's latest (after The Sugar Queen) takes the familiar setup of a young protagonist returning to the small town where her elusive mother was raised, and subverts it by sprinkling just enough magic into the narrative to keep things lively but short of saccharine. Seventeen-year-old Emily Benedict, intent on learning more about her mother, Dulcie, moves in with her grandfather, but is disappointed to find that her grandfather doesn't want to talk much about Dulcie. She soon discovers, though, that many still hold a grudge against Dulcie for the way she treated an old sweetheart before dumping him and disappearing. Luckily, Dulcie's high school adversary, Julia Winterson, back in town to pay down her deceased father's debt, takes a shine to Emily. She's working another quest as well: baking cakes every day with the hope that they'll somehow attract the daughter she gave up for adoption years ago. There are love interests, big family secrets, and magical happenings (color-changing wallpaper, mysterious lights) aplenty as Allen charts the spiraling inter-generational stories, bringing everything together in an unexpected way. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In Allen's newest sugar-and-spice Southern fantasy (The Sugar Queen, 2008, etc.), a teenage girl comes to live with her grandfather in a small town where oddity is a way of life. Raised by her selfless, politically active mother Dulcie in Boston, Emily has never met or heard about her grandfather until she comes to live with him in Mullaby, N.C., after Dulcie's sudden death. Emily immediately confronts unexplainable peculiarities: Grandfather Vance turns out to be a shy giant over eight feet tall; the wallpaper in Emily's room changes at will; strange white lights materialize at night in the woods outside her window; objects appear and disappear without reason. And then there are the locals' less-than-warm memories of Dulcie. Emily makes friends with Win, a teenage boy whose family secret requires him to stay inside at night. Win tells Emily that his uncle committed suicide because Dulcie cruelly exposed his secret to the town. Grandfather Vance's neighbor Julia, who has also befriended Emily, was Dulcie's classmate and acknowledges that in high school Dulciespoiled, rich and popularmercilessly teased Julia, then a troubled teen who dyed her hair pink and cut herself. Julia left Mullaby when she was 16 and has come back for a temporary stay only because her father died. Until she pays off his debts, she is running his barbecue restaurant, where she has added cakes and pastries to the menu. What Julia doesn't tell Emily is that the night before she left Mullaby to attend a school for troubled girls in Baltimore, she made love with handsome preppy Sawyer and ended up pregnant. Sawyer, who assumed she had an abortion, is now pursuing Julia again, but there is a secret she has not told him. As the parallel romances of Emily and Win and Julia and Sawyer evolve, the secrets of Mullaby become sources of happiness rather than pain. Fans of Allen's brand of romantic whimsy won't mind the inconsistencies and lapses of logic, but others may cringe at the implausibility. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
New York Times best-selling author Allen follows up Garden Spells (2007), also available from Books on Tape/Random Audio, with another enchanting tale set in her home state of North Carolina. When Emily Benedict arrives in Mullaby, NC, she knows almost nothing about her late mother's hometown and its quirky residents, including why many of them seem to despise her. She finds a friend in Julia, an avid cake baker grappling with her own secrets. This multigenerational tale, read with flair by actress Rebecca Lowman, has many special ingredients: a dash of romance, a touch of family drama, and a sprinkling of the paranormal, mixed with Allen's trademark Southern charm. Enthusiastically recommended. [Embeddable audio clip available through library.booksontape.com; the Bantam hc also received a starred review, LJ 12/09.-Ed.]-Theresa Stoner, St. Joseph Cty. P.L., South Bend, IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
